Xiu Xiu

Nobody ever seems to question the fact that music about pain is often the prettiest. Oftentimes, the most complex, difficult, gut-wrenchingly painful situations seem to be expressed through the glossiest, most calculated and restrained music. Ultimately, the specificity and contradiction that make painful situations so personal are replaced by prefabricated shake-n-bake signifiers of intimacy and pain.

Perhaps that's why Xiu Xiu's music seems to cause such confusion. Jamie Stewart's vibrato-laden whispers and shrieks, set over with an instrumental framework that runs the gamut from gently strummed acoustic guitar to crashing fleets of atonal gongs, certainly doesn't fit into the cookie-cutter definition of "sincere" and "reflective" music that we've come to expect. Nor do Stewart's lyrics, which are often squirm-inducingly dark, unconventionally specific, and laden with proper names. Xiu Xiu's music is frequently written up as an ironic in-joke, or simply a sonic approximation of madness, but the truly affecting thing about Xiu Xiu's music is that the difficult, conflicting, and messy portrait it presents so resembles the lived experience of pain in all its uneasiness, confusion, and terrible hilarity.

After the band's gear was stolen last month in Montana, Jamie Stewart aborted Xiu Xiu's ambitious spring tour plans and went home, which is exactly where he was when I called him up to discuss this year's absolutely bizarre A Promise, and the tragicomic story of the album's cover art. Far from being the raving lunatic the album presents, Stewart is witty, insightful, direct and funny. After he adjusted the "soccer mom earpiece" of his cellphone, we began.

Pitchfork: So first, that sucks you got all your gear stolen.

Jamie: Yeah, thumbs down. A friend of mine, Rob Fisk who was in [Deerhoof] for the first couple of records, we talked about it. He said something really fantastic to me insofar as, how can you use this situation to do something creative, rather than just to feel like it's been cursed. It was a good thing to hear, because I was just like, "FUCK LIFE!" He was like, "Dude, calm down, take a step back." It was a really good thing to hear, especially coming from him-- that guy changed my fucking life. Just blew my brain apart musically, completely. It was good to hear it, you know, there isn't a fucking lot else to do.

Pitchfork: Did you have a lot of programmed, irreplaceable-type stuff?

Jamie: Eh... yeah. Whatevs. Program it better next time, y'know? Something different will happen.

Pitchfork: The first thing I usually get asked by people when I play them a Xiu Xiu record is, "Is it a joke?"

Jamie: [Laughs] Ouch! Notice, I'm laughing. So... perhaps it is!

Pitchfork: I think a lot of people aren't used to music addressing them in that way. It sometimes seems so over the top that most people aren't used to anything being that...

Jamie: My dad at one point was a really famous record producer, and he told me that the only regret he ever had in music was not going over the top enough. He talked to me kind of long and hard about-- you know, not necessarily that we're doing this successfully, who the fuck knows, but he talked to me about-- any time you're doing something in music that makes you feel kind of uncomfortable, then something actual is happening. And sometimes it's successful, and people can get touched by it, and sometimes people are like, "Is it a joke?" But the times that it's successful never happen unless you go fucking balls-out on something and just rip yourself apart. Personally, too, any creative venture that's ever meant anything to me personally has been really over the top. I mean, shit like, most indie rock, I think, is some of the dumbest fucking music I've ever heard, because it's usually just, listless. Not even the same old stuff, but people being very subtle, and very guarded. I mean, fucking, why? Why?

Pitchfork: I think a lot of people just want to be in a band, or think that they can innovate by just being another band with, like, tape manipulations...

Jamie: People have been doing that since, like, the 40s. Big deal. If somebody can do indie rock with tape manipulations, and then they can tear their fucking heart in half, then they're doing something, hopefully. I don't know. Going over the top in and of itself isn't an end. I don't just mean emotionally. I think that in anything you do-- I mean, just SCREAMING THAT MY LIFE'S HORRIBLE! I'M GOING TO CUT MY OWN FUCKING HEAD OFF! I mean, I don't think that's necessarily going over the top. I think that whether or not we do it successfully, sometimes we do. I think that being incredibly honest with what you're feeling is the most over-the-top that you can go. And if it's really histrionic, and it's really crazy-dramatic, but that's a real expression of somebody's life, then that person, luckily for them, is doing something that can be a real experience for somebody. And if you just sit there and wear a fucking trucker hat and play a Jaguar guitar, you can suck my fucking asshole. Ech, ech! It pisses me off. I'm so fucking tired of that shit.

Pitchfork: I think there's kind of a prevalent idea that for something to be "honest," it has to be purely from personal experience, that you can't take on or imagine anybody else's experience.

Jamie: I don't think that you can go through life and not have other people's experiences affect you, though. I mean, two-thirds of the Xiu Xiu songs are about people who we're really really close to. If something horrible happens to my mom, that's going to break my heart. If something happens to my best friend's little sister, just because it didn't happen to me specifically doesn't mean it doesn't affect my life or my insides at all.

Pitchfork: The way you play with subjectivity is really interesting-- the proper names and all that. It kind of grounds it and makes it more abstract at the same time, since we know that it's somebody, but it's not somebody we know.

Jamie: It's names that people in Xiu Xiu know, though. But I see what you're saying.

Pitchfork: I think that at this point, in particular, we kind of do everything in our power not to look at painful things.

Jamie: Yeah. I think not looking at things is a reaction to genuinely being in pain. The whole fucking electroclash party was, I think, people being so fucking freaked out that they needed to fucking party for a while. Like, "Wow, I cannot look outside without seeing somebody's life being totally destroyed, I need to get out and wear some stupid-ass clothes and get down for a while, or my brain is going to melt." I don't know. I wish people could do that and also try to push things creatively. Sometimes people just have to get drunk a little bit, I don't know.

Pitchfork: It seems that a lot of the time, you play on false resolutions, on a false sense of well-being. The song that got me the first was "Suha", because the fact that things seem to resolve, but everything is still off-kilter and out of tune, really fucking threw me.

Jamie: That's just kind of how things turn out a lot of times. At the risk of sounding hideously self-referential, we got the name Xiu Xiu from that movie Xiu Xiu The Sent Down Girl, and the whole theme of that movie is that there's no resolution sometimes. It goes on-- terrible shit, terrible shit, terrible shit keeps happening to this woman, and at the end she dies. And it was that rotten realness, that sometimes life turns out with a worst possible case scenario. When we were putting the band together, we found that a lot of the songs were ending up like that, and so we picked that name just because it seemed to be some other reference to that idea. Yeah, you know, life's a bitch sometimes.

Pitchfork: Is that why you chose to cover "Fast Car"?

Jamie: Exactly. Jesus, that song is hugely, hugely, tremendously influential on our songwriting. It's a song about people with a really kind of uncertain sense about how to make things be better-- and things don't turn out better in the end. These two people trying it together, and they think, "Okay, we can try to start this new life," and it clearly falls apart. And then the singer eventually thinks she'll just drive away from it again, but that obviously is not going to fix anything. For years and years, that song has just killed me. I mean, this is going to make me sound like a gigantic dick, but I swear it's true-- every time I hear that song, it makes me cry. Because of how much things are that way sometimes. You try and try and try and try and shit just does not fucking work out. And you get some kind of very difficult and small idea of how you can make things better-- maybe if you fall in love with someone, or maybe if you found a different job, or maybe if you go back to community college, or maybe if you have a baby, or maybe if you get off drugs or something things will turn out okay. And sometimes it does, but a lot of time it doesn't.

Pitchfork: It seems that in your lyrics, you deal with a lot of issues of trying to figure things out without any decision really being made. There's a sense of, sort of, grasping at things.

Pitchfork: That seems a lot clearer on the new album-- a lot of songs end in this kind of ambiguous breakdown.

Jamie: Yeah, more so on the new album than on the last one. I don't really know what else to say about that, other than "Yes." [Laughs]

Pitchfork: Did anything personally change for you between the first and second records?

Jamie: Yeah. A lot of negative things in my personal life happened. Like, really severely negative things, that were beginning to come to pass when we worked on [Knife Play] and I had a lot of questions about bad things that could come to happen when we were working on [A Promise]. So yeah, a lot of really bad things happened that year.

Pitchfork: Was the Chapel of the Chimes EP recorded between the two albums?

Jamie: It was recorded at the same time that we were working on A Promise. We were just recording a bunch of songs, and we tried to pick songs that we thought would sound good together for the EP, and then to pick songs that would sound good together on the album.

Pitchfork: Your voice is more towards the front of the mix on the new record. Did you become more confident as a singer?

Jamie: I had just been singing way more. [Laughs] I don't know if I necessarily feel more confident lyrically, but I think I got a little bit more used to the sound of my voice.

Pitchfork: How does that translate live?

Jamie: Usually the live versions are pretty, not night-and-day from the recorded version, but the rocked-up stuff tends to be kind of more rocked out. I mean, obviously, it's louder than home stereo. We bring an obscene amount of equipment to shows, a crazy amount. I mean, mountains of fucking amps and stuff. Usually when we're writing the stuff, we're writing it as we're recording it. So by the time we actually get around to learning how to play the song, there's some technical limitation insofar as it would be impossible for us to play it the same way it was recorded. And it ends up being kind of fun to do that anyway. And hopefully if people listen to a record and come to a show that's the kind of thing they like anyhow. Yeah, I think tons of gear is the answer.

Half of the songs tend to be the louder, more dance-y stuff, and the other half is the really quiet stuff. It's really fascinating to play the really quiet stuff at a rock club, because about half of the time people are just there to get drunk and hang out and not really watch bands. So we'll just play quieter and quieter and quieter and quieter. And sometimes amazingly, and god only knows why, people will be really cool about it and it'll be like totally quiet, completely quiet. It's really funny, in this bar that smells like urine, for it to be totally silent. It's a really funny experience. It's really either one way or the other. Always really quiet or always... like we're not even playing, which is okay. It's not people's fucking job to be quiet when we're playing, but it's nice.

Pitchfork: See, I really, really hate it when I go to shows and there are people who see the quiet parts as the parts when they can hear themselves the best.

Jamie: When I go to shows, I find it fucking annoying. Like, insanely annoying. But when I'm playing a show, I can't, like, fucking demand that someone pay attention to me. We're basically there to play a part in someone else's night. But maybe they went to work, had a shitty day, and don't give a fuck about Xiu Xiu, you know?

Pitchfork: Yeah, when I go to shows, I have this elaborate fantasy scenario where I become "the crowd ninja," and I do back flips and decapitate people who won't shut up.

Jamie: I'll have to get into that. Because it makes me crazy when people talk at shows. I just heard about this, it was at an early Bright Eyes show, when he was just kind of famous, but not, like, Time Magazine famous. And some guy at the show was talking, and apparently this woman who was at the show screamed at the guy at the top of her lungs, "I DROVE SEVEN HOURS TO GET TO THIS SHOW! IF YOU FUCK IT UP, I'M GOING TO KICK YOUR ASS!" I always want to yell that at someone, but I've never had the courage to do that. I thought that was so fucking hot, though, that this person who came to the show was like, "YOU WILL NOT FUCK UP MY NIGHT, MOTHERFUCKER!" If I ever saw somebody do that at any show, they would become my hero immediately.

Pitchfork: I like it when bands punish their audience-- like, when the Frogs, who are ancient and bitter and obviously hate their lives, refuse to play the songs that their fans want, or when Les Savy Fav gag people and cut their hair against their will. I would think a lot of people would go to your shows, just having heard the records, and would be pretty terrified. Do you ever, like, scare people?

Jamie: No, intentionally, I wouldn't do that. I can appreciate the things you described. If I saw somebody do that, I would think it was cool. But my own personality, I'm just not like that as a guy, so if I did that it would just be totally phony-baloney. I don't know how I can put this, but the most important thing philosophically with what we're doing is to be genuine with what we're singing about. Because the songs are about real things. It's important to us that when we're playing it, we're in that feeling that occurred at the time. Or a lot of the times we're still feeling it, because it's about people we care about, or ourselves, and it doesn't go away. It would be really, really disingenuous of me to, like, fuck around during one of our shows, or freak people out, because that's the opposite of what we're trying to do musically.

Pitchfork: A term that comes up a lot to describe your music is "goth."

Jamie: You know, that doesn't bother me at all. When I was in high school, I was a huge goth.

Pitchfork: When I was in high school, goth kids wouldn't talk to me!

Jamie: [Laughs] Goth kids use dressing up crazy to kind of hide the fact that they feel like huge fucking dorks. Goth kids are the least cool people in the world. Have you ever been to a goth dance club?

Pitchfork: No.

Jamie: Biggest. Dorks. Ever. [Laughs] Goths are big, shy dorks. I'm like 31, so it's a very different era of goth.

Pitchfork: Now, it's almost like...

Jamie: Yeah, now you can go to fucking Hot Topic and be a goth. It's a very different kind of thing.

Pitchfork: I feel like now you can't really manifest your despair by wearing weird clothing anymore, because whatever you wear, there's a group of kids wearing the same stuff.

Jamie: Yeah, I mean, that's the same fucking thing as being a jock, you know? I mean, I just think it's a matter of being a good person or being an asshole. It doesn't really matter what the fuck you're wearing. If you're an asshole, you're an asshole.

Pitchfork: What's up with the album cover?

Jamie: [Laughs] It's a funny story. It's kind of long, though.

Pitchfork: We do long-form interviews-- go ahead!

Jamie: Okay. About two years ago, I had this little recording studio. I had wanted to take this trip to Vietnam, and I wanted to think of ways that I could save up enough money to do it. So I had a bunch of recording equipment and I basically just opened a recording studio in my house and recorded all the really fucking awful punk rock and ska bands in the neighborhood. So I saved up a ton of money, and then I took this trip by myself to go to Vietnam. I was going by myself, so whatever, I thought it would be funny if I took this little rubber baby with me and I put the baby in different places and I took pictures of it. And I thought it would be fun and possibly interesting/disturbing.

By the end of the trip, I was staying in Hanoi, and I'd heard that there was this really famous gay cruising lake in Hanoi, and I was like, "Oh, fuck, man, what's the gay cruising scene in Hanoi all about? I can't miss this!" [Laughs] So I was walking around the lake, and I get cruised by this guy. And I'm sort of freaked out, you know? Culturally, I don't understand what's appropriate and not appropriate for this kind of thing, and getting cruised in any situation is dicey, let alone on an opposite hemisphere. So I'm kind of talking to this guy and he's like, "Want to go to a gay bar?" And I'm all like, "Oh, fuck, man, a gay bar in Hanoi! I've got to check it out!" And he's like, "Okay, tell me where it is and we'll go," and I was like, "Shit, this guy doesn't know anything."

At this point, we'd been in a dark area. We got into the light, and I realized that it was basically this younger homeless guy. His clothes were really ripped up and shitty looking, and I started empathizing. I mean, this wasn't just somebody trying to get laid, it's a young hustler kid. And I'm obviously really broke, and if he's hustling white tourists, then his life isn't going to be that great. So he kept asking me to take him back to my hotel and fuck him and give him money, and I was like, "Noooo way, not going to happen!" And he just would not let up on asking me to take him back to my hotel. So I realize that he's just, like, super desperate and poor. So I get this very questionable idea into my head of, "How can I give this guy some money, not have sex with him, but also have this totally fucking... weird, and possibly very wrong kind of experience?"

I asked him, "I've been doing a lot of pictures on the trip. How about we go back to my hotel room and I take some naked pictures of you holding this baby?" And he's all like, "Yeah, okay, whatever." I could've said to him, "Let's go play basketball." And I'm feeling really squirrely and weird about this, you know? "Am I exploiting this guy?" "Is it art?" Whatever. "Maybe I'm doing something good, because he'll get a bunch of money and he doesn't have to do something that could potentially be unsafe. But, will this be totally humiliating to him? How's he gonna feel about this?" But sometimes, you've got to do the wrong thing.

So we go back to my hotel room, and the whole thing lasts maybe about five minutes. And he asks me if he can take a shower, and he takes off his clothes and he's got scars and cuts and burns all over him-- he's obviously lived a shitty, fucking hard life. And I start taking pictures of him holding the baby, and he starts stripping and taking off his clothes. I told him I was going to use them for something eventually, and he didn't seem to care at all. In a lot of the pictures, he was trying to look really, really sexy. And it was so many weird feelings-- it was really touching that he was just trying to do his job, you know? "Right now, my job is a sex worker, and I'm going to try to do my fucking hard job, even though I'm with a total fucking weird-ass guy who wants to take pictures of me with this baby." And at the same time, here's this guy who's maybe 20, and obviously been beat the shit out of a bunch of times-- this is how his life turned out. Really hard to watch. And also, sometimes just fucking hilarious-- here's this fucking naked dude trying to look hot holding this baby? [Laughs]

You know, it was very confusing and really weird. And then afterwards, I paid him way more money than I said I would, because I felt like an asshole and really guilty and weird about the whole thing. And he, like, immediately asked for three times more money. He went into hustler mode right away. And I can't really blame the guy. I really didn't have any more, but I gave him tons and tons and tons. Amazingly, the dude's name was Hang. Which is kind of... ironic and horrible and great, maybe?

Pitchfork: Yeah, I feel sorry for people with names like that. I know some people named, like, Bamboo Dong, and Bang Hwang.

Jamie: Yeah, those people have had hard lives in high school. I'm sure Jamie sounds like fucking "buffalo vagina" in some language, I don't know.

Pitchfork: Yeah, I've read about the fact that gamelan music has influenced you.

Jamie: That's just from listening to records. I mean, I've never been any place where people play gamelan music. I've had a chance to travel to a few different countries before, and interestingly, it always takes me about a month from the time I get back to start working on music again. The experiences seem completely separate. Yeah, I've definitely been very, very, very, very influenced by gamelan music, and a lot of Korean and Japanese folk music.

Pitchfork: I hear it a lot in the way percussion is used.

Jamie: Yeah, that's from listening to records.

Pitchfork: I mean, I think percussion is so often a dead end. It's used as an anchoring force, rather than a disrupting force.

Jamie: That's interesting. Cory McCulloch who plays in Xiu Xiu knows a whole lot about modern classical music, and a lot of modern classical music is really influenced by percussion from different Asian countries, for exactly the reasons you just stated.

Pitchfork: Modern classical, with pop structures, and gay disco beats.

Jamie: That's our thing, dude! That's our goal! [Laughs]

Pitchfork: Well, I don't think anybody else has approached it from that angle before!

Jamie: Oh, I'm sure somebody has... maybe Danzig! [Laughs] Danzig's house is black, and all the grass is dead, and he has a black Porsche. A friend of mine knows where he lives, and we drove by it in Los Angeles, and it was perfect. The dead grass, that was the best part.